Great Southern Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:GSBC) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call July 17, 2024 3:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Kelly Polonus - Investor Relations
Joe Turner - President and Chief Executive Officer
Rex Copeland - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Andrew Liesch - Piper Sandler
Damon DelMonte - KBW
John Rodis - Janney

Operator

Hello. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Great Southern Bancorp, Inc. Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to Kelly Polonus. You may begin.

Kelly Polonus

Thank you. Well, good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter earnings call. The purpose of this call is to discuss the company's results for the quarter ending June 30, 2024.

Before we begin, I need to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements about future events and financial performance. These statements are subject to a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from projected results. For a list of some of these factors, please see the forward-looking statements disclosure in our second quarter earnings release and our other public filings.

President and CEO, Joe Turner; and Chief Financial Officer, Rex Copeland, are on the call with me.

I'll now turn the meeting over to Joe.

Joe Turner

All right. Thanks, Kelly, and good afternoon to everybody. Our second quarter results reflected improved earnings versus the first quarter of 2024, both on a reported basis and excluding the non-recurring items, as we continue to operate in a challenging economic environment.

For the second quarter, we earned $1.45 per diluted common share or $17 million, compared to $1.52 or $18.3 million for the same period in 2023. Earnings were $1.13 per share or $13.4 million in the first quarter of ‘24. Excluding the non-recurring items related to the terminated core banking system conversion project and some compliance matters, earnings per diluted common share were $1.37 for the second quarter of ‘24.

Key drivers of our performance included modest increases in overall funding costs, continued significant competition for deposits and lower loan origination volume. The second quarter was also the first full period without the negative impact of one of our interest rate swaps, as we discussed in previous reports. Rex will provide more color on our results in his presentation.